Elliott Smith Autumn de Wilde

Foreword by Beck Hansen and Chris Walla

Elliott SmithPhotograph by Autumn de WildeContributing Editor: Tanyawan Norachit

2008 by Autumn de Wilde. All right reservedNo part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrival system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, machanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission of the copyright holder ISBN -10 0-8118-5799-9ISBN -13 978-0-8118-5799-4

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Elliott Smith //

Table of Content 55 Conversation with Matthew Caws

59 Conversation with Neil Gust

64 Conversation with Joanna Bolme

66 Conversation with Dorien Garry

71 Conversation with Sean Croghan & Joanna Bolme

78 Conversation with Alyssa siegel

129 Conversation with Larry Crane

132 Conversation with Sam Coomes

136 Conversation with Ben Gibbard

145 Conversation with Chris Walla

223 Acknowledgments / Playlist

Seven years gone, and Elliott Smith remain as misunderstood in death as he was under-appreciated in life.” —Autumn de Wilde

“

Introduction // Elliott Smith // Elliott Smith ⁄⁄

Born (August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and resided for a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity. His primary instrument was the guitar, but he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. Smith had a distinctive vocal style charac-terized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery" and use of multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies.

After playing in rock band Heatmiser for several years, Smith began his solo career in 1994 with releases on the independent record labels Cavity Search and Kill Rock Stars. In 1997 he signed a contract with Dream-Works Records, for which he recorded two albums. Smith rose to mainstream prominence when his song "Miss Misery"—included in the soundtrack for the film Good Will Hunting—was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category in 1998.

Smith suffered from depression, alcoholism, and drug ad-diction, and these topics often appeared in his lyrics. At age 34, he died in Los Angeles, California from two stab wounds to the chest. The autopsy evidence was inconclusive as to whether the wounds were self-in-flicted. At the time of his death, Smith was working on his sixth studio album, From a Basement on the Hill, which was posthumously released.

Steven Paul “Elliott” Smith

Introduction // Elliott Smith //

Mural next to Uncle jer’s

Los angeles, California

Behind tropical bakery

Los angeles, California

Elliott Smith // Elliott Smith ⁄⁄

Los Angeles, California

1999

Conversation with

Dorien GarryDorien was Elliott’s roommate after he moved to New York in 1997 He stayed with her on and off even after he had moved into his own apartment.

Elliott Smith // 68 Elliott Smith ⁄⁄

fan memorial was initiated outside Solutions Audio

4334 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

Where Figure 8 album cover was shot

Elliott Smith // 70 Elliott Smith ⁄⁄ 71

AUTUMN: What had this guy done to you?DORIEN: Oh, he was just a jerk. It wasn’t

anything really horrible. Elliott was super-aware. Like, you know, when you’re out having a good time with your friends, and then a bummer person comes in and the whole mood changes? I guess he saw him walking up to the door and thought, “I want to make sure this guy doesn’t come in here and bum everyone out.” It was like haVing a big brother that you had to actually watch out for yourself most of the time. He was big-brotherly, but then things would go tits-up and I would have to go pick up the pieces of the mess he had just made. Like that time at Max Fish.... There was another night outside Max Fish; he went out to get ciga-rettes or something, and my car was parked right out front. He saw this guy taking a leak on my car. He said something like, “Go pee somewhere else!” I think he got punched. I told him, “That was sweet, and thanks for looking out for your friends and all, but for Christ sakes just let the guy pee on my car. It’s not worth getting punched on the street for.”

THE OSCARSDORIEN: The first thing Elliott said to me after

the Oscarwas that it didn’t matter that there were a hundred million people watching and a huge audience and that it was on TV. The only person he could see was Jack Nich-olson sitting there staring at him. He said it just freaked him out. He couldn’t get past the fact that Jack Nicholson was just sitting there right in front of him

MILLENNIUMDORIEN: He felt really bad that all of these

people paid all of this money to see him play

on the big millennium New Year’s Eve. He felt like he needed to put on a show, and he didn’t have anything to wear to put on some kind of a show. He was trying to convince me to find him something really goofy. “Can you just find some weird random stuff, and I’ll just go through it?” I found a floor-length, bright red, Elmo-furry Zip-up robe with a hood, like a “Mrs. Roper” gone wrong. It was a crazy one-piece to-the-floor dressing gown, but it was made of red fur fleece with a big hood and a little red mohair hat with a little goofy point on the top, which was really an expensive hat. I was like, don’t lose that hat! I don’t care about the rest of it ... but don’t lose that hat!

AUTUMN: Which club was it?DORIEN: At the Knitting Factory. And then I

brought these big red furry slippers. He didn’t put any of it on before he went out on stage.

AUTUMN: He was nervous about it?DORIEN: Yeah, and he felt like he didn’t want

to do AUTUMN: Why?.DORIEN: He thought it was going to be so anti-

climactic. You know, imagine Elliott droning: “Ten ... nine ... eight .. :’ He kept practicing it over and over again backstage-”Happy New Year! “-trying to muster up the enthusiasm. But he did it! And the club had given us all these champagne bottles. They were over off to the side of the stage. I thought I would beat the clock and get them ready for pop-ping, so I started taking the metal wires off. I didn’t know that you can’t really get a head start with champagne, so they all started to pop during the last song! As it started hap-pening, I didn’t know which ones were going to pop, and I just didn’t have enough hands to try and stop them!

He wrote on napkins, on receipts, on any piece of paper that came his way. If you ever went to his house you’d see huge piles of scrap paper with all these lyrics scrawed onto them” —Autumn de Wilde

“

Elliott Smith // Elliott Smith ⁄⁄ 73

Los Angeles, California 1999

AUTUMN: Was this during a song?DORIEN: Yeah! And every ten seconds one of

them would pop! He kept looking over like, “What the fuck is going on?” There were fifteen bottles of champagne.... And they are loud!

AUTUMN: And was he playing acoustic?DORIEN: Yeah; he was playing totally by him-

self. I’m sure the audience could hear it. No band to drown it out. It was such a small club, and he kept looking over, inquiring with his eyes: “What is going on?” But trying to finish the song anyway, and everyone else was laughing at his nutcase friend who was trying to keep the champagne bottles in order! But he did it, and did the countdown, too. He was like, “Happy New Year!” And he brought the champagne bottles out and passed them around. He did a really good job actually; he mustered it up in the end and had a big smile on his face. Then he had another forty minutes he was expected to play, so that’s when he started out with the slippers. And I think he even sat down and said, “I thought I needed to do something special for you guys ... ,” and by the end of the night he had the whole shebang on. He looked completely ridiculous in this amazing way. He looked like some giant red furry monster. I took a photo of him that night. I have two pictures hanging up in my apartment that are in places that I don’t necessarily look at all the time, like not next to a light switch or something, but that photo ... I love so much because when it catches my eye, it makes me laugh a lot. It snaps me back to remembering the goofy ... the goofy times.

Elliott Smith // 74 Elliott Smith ⁄⁄ 75

BAR FIGHTAUTUMN: One of the first photos I took of

Elliott was on the street here in New York. He lifted up the back of his shirt so I could take a picture of the cuts he had on his back from a fight he’d been in.

DORIEN: At Max Fish?AUTUMN: Yeah, Joanna couldn’t remember

the details, just that the guy was a bully. She thought you were there.

DORIEN: Well, that night he was with Bill Santen and Glen Kotche, Bill’s drum-mer at the time. They had just played at Mercury Lounge or something, and it was just around the corner. Those guys were in the back waiting to play pool, and I was up in front with my friends. And it’s funny but not funny, you know? Some guy who was playing pool made a disparaging remark to some woman in Elliott’s earshot, and Elliott decided to be a little bit of a tough guy about it. The guy was much bigger and prob-ably active in the fighting world, you know. [LAUGHING)

AUTUMN: All I remember is that he said, “I was in a bar and I called this guy an as-shole ... ‘cause he was!”

DORIEN: That was the sweet thing about it. The whole thing was because he made some comment about some girl that Elliott found offensive. It wasn’t about a pool game or money on the pool table or something like that. Just that some guy made a shitty comment about a girl and Elliott just lost it. I guess they kind of pushed each other

around, and then I think Elliott punched him, and then he got pushed down and ended up falling down onto a pint glass, which was how he got his back cut up so bad. And in typical Elliott fashion he refused to go to the hospital. He refused to do any of the things you are supposed to do when you have pieces of a pint glass in your back. [LAUGHING] He came back with me that night and like fixed it up himself, which was kind of ...

AUTUMN: Oh, my God.DORIEN: I remember just being told all of

a sudden that I needed to go to the back because there was a fight. The idea of Elliott being in a bar fight was so absurd for so many reasons. But he would do that sometimes; he would pick little fights with people. There was this time, there was this lame guy I was dating who was lame and ended up being even lamer in the end. He started to walk into the bar one night and, without me even knowing, while my back was to the door, Elliott took it upon himself to go meet the guy at the door and tell him to go drink somewhere else. But this guy totally knew who he was. He was a big fan of Elliott’s and got really embarrassed. It was very sweet and funny, but I was like, “You’re going to get hurt someday.” It’s not like this guy would have gotten violent about it, except be really upset that one of his favorite singers just told him to hit the high road, but some days Elliott would get hurt when he tried that stuff out.

In typical Elliott fashion he refused to go to the hospital. He refused to do any of the things you are supposed to do when you have pieces of a pint glass in your back.”

—Dorien Garry

“

Elliott Smith // 76 Elliott Smith ⁄⁄ 77

He was an original— no matter how hard people try to sound like him, they always just sound like they’re trying to sound like him. It never sounds like Elliott” —Joanna Bolme

“

Elliott Smith // 78 Elliott Smith ⁄⁄ 79

August 6,1969 Born Steven Paul Smith in Omaha, Nebraska to BunnyBerryman and Gary Smith.1970 Parents divorce. Elliott moves to Ounfanville.Texas with his mother.1979 Starts learning to play guitar. Also composes a song on piano that wins him a prize a local arts festival

1983 Moves to Portland, Oregon to live with her father. 1987 Graduates high school as a National Merit Scholar,changes his name to Elliott because Steven sounds too much like a ‘Jock’ name.1988 Release his first album, ‘The greenhouse’,with college band A murder Of Crows.

1991 Recieves his degree in philosophy and political science from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, Returns to Portland to start the band Heatmiser with classmate Neil Gust.

1993 Heatmiser release their debut album, ‘Dead Air’ 1994 His girlfriend encour-ages him to send a tape of his most recent songs to Cavity Search Records. These are the basis for his solo album, ‘Roman Candle’.

1995 ‘Elliott Smith’, his sec-ond solo album, is release on Kill Rock Stars.

1997 Releases third album ‘Either/Or’ and moves from Portland to Brooklyn. Shortly after the album’s release, He tries to kill himself by jumping from a cliff. his fall is miraculously broken by a tree.

1998 ‘Miss Misery’ , as fea-tured in the movie Good Will Hunting, is nominated for an Oscar and Elliott performs the song in front of a TV audience od billions. later that year he signs a major label deal with DreamWorks and releases ‘XO’. The album goes on to sell 400,000 copies.

IN LIFE AND DEATH: An Elliott Smith timeline

1999 Still drinking heavily, he begins to use crack and heroin. Moves from Brooklyn to Silver Lake, Los Angeles. His cover of The Beatles ‘Be-cause’ features on the end credits of American Beauty. 2000 ‘Figure 8’ the last album he completed in his lifetime, is released.

2001 Begins recording a new album with producer Jon Brion, but the sessions are scuppered when Brion conforts Smith about his subtance abuse. He is reportedly smoking $1,500- worth of heroin and crack per day. 2002 Smith plays only three shows all year. One of them lasts an hour and see him fail to complete a single song. He later enters rehab and successfully quits drugs.

OCTOBER 21,2003 After an argument in their apartment in Silver lake, Girlfriend Jennifer Chiba finds Smith with a knife in his chest. He is rushed into hospital, but dies shortly after arrival.

NOVEMBER,2003 A memo-rial concert is held in his honour. Beck, Tim Burgress, Rilo Kiley and Beth Orton all play.JANUARY 2004 The LA county coroner returns an open verdict on Smith’s death, and does not rule out the possibilty that he was murdered A copy of the report leaks onto the internet

JULY 2004 Jennifer Chiba unsuccessfully sues the Smith family for 15 per-cent of his earning (over $1m), claiming that Smith promised to take care of her financially for the rest of her life.

2007 ‘New moon’, a collec-tion of B-sides and rarities recored between 1994-1997 is released to good sales and favourable reviews.